No matter how high or drunk she got or how many times she was arrested or landed in the hospital, Jamie Lee Metzger always found a way back to her mother's home in New Tripoli.

And Audrey Hendricks always welcomed her daughter, giving her a place to sleep, some food or money. Metzger's troubles and absences stemmed from her abuse of alcohol and painkillers, her family says.

And they suspect that had something to do with her disappearance a year ago.

"She was my baby," said Hendricks, 61, now living in a retirement home in west Allentown. "I wish I could have her back."

It's been more than a year since anyone has seen or heard from Metzger, a 39-year-old mother of two. The only memento her mother has is the pink backpack Metzger used as an overnight bag. In it are a pair of sneakers, a change of clothes and some medical papers.

No leads a year after Jamie Lee Metzger went missing in Allentown.

(APRIL BARTHOLOMEW / THE MORNING CALL )

The last time Hendricks talked to her daughter was around early April of last year. The conversation was so routine, Hendricks is at a loss to recall it.

The last time Metzger contacted her sister, Donna Batz, was in a brief and banal text message March 31, 2014.

"It's like she just dropped off the face of the Earth," Batz said.

Because Metzger had been living a somewhat transient life, five months went by before the family grew concerned enough to report her missing. Allentown police would not detail what steps they have taken to find Metzger, whose last residence was in the city, or where they have searched.

The images here show homicide victims from the Lehigh Valley whose murders have not been solved, as well as missing persons not located.

(The Morning Call staff)

Unlike the case of a Lower Macungie Township woman who went missing four months earlier, Metzger's case isn't known to many in the Lehigh Valley.

Holly Grim, 41, went missing after dropping off her son at his school bus stop. Her family reported her disappearance within hours. That day, state police alerted the media, leading to several news stories and television reports.

Like Metzger, Grim remains missing. Police do not believe the cases are related.

Grim's case has garnered attention here and beyond. Robert E. Devers, the state trooper handling Grim's disappearance, said media were alerted right away as they are in all state police criminal investigations. Since then, state police have sent out only one news release about the case.

Most of the information has come from Grim's family and friends, who have held fundraisers, rallies and searches for her. They distributed a poster with her picture on it to businesses in the East Penn area and put it on an electronic billboard off Route 22.

Their efforts captured the attention of Missing in America, an organization dedicated to finding missing persons. The group's founder organized a search for Grim with dozens of volunteers.

The "Praying for Holly Grim" Facebook page counts almost 1,700 members; a second Facebook page provides updates on the search. Friends were posting on the main site as recently as last week.

No Facebook page has been established for Metzger's search. Allentown police have posted her photo on their website. In fact, she is the only missing person whose case is listed there. And friends have quietly searched for Metzger near her childhood home in New Tripoli but there have been no large-scale searches. No fundraisers. No billboards.

Metzger's family and friends are trying to get a reward together to aid the search and are talking publicly about her in hopes of shaking loose information that might help police close the case.

They don't expect miracles, just answers.

"I've concluded a long time ago that what happened to her is bad," Batz said.

Delayed reaction

Metzger initially was reported missing to Emmaus police Sept. 2 because her mother was living there at the time.

Sgt. Tim Hoats said his department started looking into her disappearance, finding that Metzger's driver's license had expired in 2013 and that she wasn't known to have a cellphone. When Hendricks informed them that her daughter had never lived in Emmaus and that she had been living somewhere in Allentown, Hoats said the case was referred to Allentown police.

Getting the case more than five months after Metzger was last seen hampered Allentown's search. In the months since, Allentown Assistant Chief Bill Lake said, they've never had contact with her and there have been no "reported sightings of her in many, many months."

"Police and her family are concerned about her welfare," he said.

On the website, police say Metzger was known to frequent bars in Allentown, Easton and New Tripoli.

Batz calls the Allentown detective investigating her sister's disappearance once a month, even though her mother would prefer she call him daily.

"I can't expect them to do anything when they don't have anything to work with," she said. "It's a complicated story."

It's critical that police get the public involved when people go missing, said Todd Matthews, director of case management for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a public database operated by the U.S. Department of Justice. They should publicize where the person was last seen, what they were wearing and what kind of car they drive. And they should circulate photographs, he said.

Philadelphia police issue news releases on missing people almost daily. One day last week, for example, they sent out nearly a dozen such alerts.

"You need to act quickly and get all the information you can get," Matthews said.

"Five months is a long time," he said, referring to Metzger's case. "I think it might be too long."

One thing that makes adult missing persons cases difficult, Matthews said, is that some people don't want to be found. Adults, he noted, have a "right to go missing."

Last fall, there were more than 10,000 active missing persons cases in the national database, referred to as NamUs. That database is public.

Records kept in the National Crime Information Center database, which is overseen by the FBI, are used only by law enforcement and list nearly 85,000 missing people, about 60 percent of them adults.

State police entered Grim's case into the NamUs database, but Metzger's information wasn't entered until this month when The Morning Call brought it to the attention of NamUs.

Anyone can place a missing persons profile on the public database, pending a verification process, but police have no requirement to enter any information, Matthews said.

The FBI doesn't share its database with NamUs. But a bill in Congress called Billy's Law after a missing Connecticut man, would require the FBI to do so and to share information on unidentified remains. The bill, which passed the House but not the full Congress in 2010 and has since been reintroduced, also would make grants available to encourage local and state police to share information on such cases.

Pain to pills

Metzger grew up in New Tripoli, where her family said she had an active, fairly carefree childhood. She graduated from Northwestern Lehigh High School in 1994 and went to work as a waitress at the local pizza shop. A year after graduation, she gave birth to a son. Because Metzger was single and a teenager, her mother helped her raise the boy in the New Tripoli home they shared. Metzger's son is now in college.

Rebecca Wright met Metzger in 1997 when they both worked at the Crayola Factory in Easton. The two hit it off immediately, bonding through motherhood when Metzger helped Wright through the birth of her first child.

"I didn't even know how to change diapers," she said. "We grew really attached, we did birthday parties and family events together. I just miss her so much."

Metzger's downturn began around 2004 when she had gastric bypass surgery, her family said. The surgery helped Metzger lose 115 pounds but also got her hooked on painkillers, they say.

Metzger was happy to lose the weight, but complained of chronic back, neck and leg pain and medicated herself with pills and booze, Batz and others said.

The dangerous cocktails turned her into a different person, Wright said, remembering one incident when Metzger wanted to punch a pregnant friend in the face at a family event.

"This is not my Jamie, the pills were making her evil," Wright said.

Metzger had a second child, a daughter, in 2007.

Later that year, she was charged with drunken driving and twice was found unconscious on Allentown streets with blood-alcohol levels that were life-threatening, according to Lehigh County court records.

She eventually lost contact with most of her friends.

"I didn't invite her over as much," Wright says. "We all did the same thing. I really wish maybe I could have helped her more. She didn't really have any friends anymore."

Metzger went to rehab at least three times, but always relapsed, Batz said.

"Jamie was a good person at heart, she just got lost in addiction," she added. "She was loved."

Batz, who lives in Lower Macungie, gained full custody of Metzger's daughter in August 2013, citing in court records her sister's addictions, arrests and unemployment. Metzger never challenged the custody, and neither did the girl's father.

In her last Facebook post Feb. 15, 2014, Metzger put up a picture of herself with a man that she didn't identify. In it, both are smiling. Under it, friends commented that they hadn't seen her in a while and that they missed her.

In her last text message to her sister, Metzger asked why Batz had called her boyfriend. Batz replied that she hadn't called him. About a week later, Metzger had a brief phone conversation with her mother.

And then she vanished without warning.

Batz said the family had grown accustomed to Metzger's transient lifestyle and when they didn't hear from her, assumed she was living with someone. When months passed, they grew concerned.

"It wasn't unusual for me not to hear from her," Batz said.

But it was odd for Metzger not to call her son and her mother, both of whom she talked to regularly, Batz said.

Hendricks, whose health is frail after two strokes and several heart attacks, believes she will never see her daughter again. She is troubled that there have been no sightings of her.

In October, Wright and two others searched near Metzger's former home in New Tripoli after Hendricks told her she had "visions" of her daughter there. Her stomach in knots, Wright said she was afraid she wouldn't find anything, but more frightened she would.

"I'm not a detective," Wright said. "You just feel like you have to do something."

So far, no national groups have been involved in seeking Metzger. Community United Effort in Support of Missing Persons, based in Wilmington, N.C., held a rally for Grim in Wescosville shortly after she disappeared.

Monica Caison, the group's founder, said her group has assisted in several investigations in Pennsylvania, but was unaware of Metzger.

She said it's important for families like Metzger's to continue awareness campaigns and get the media involved so that people who might not have heard about the case, such as those in shelters or jails, get the information.

"It will bring forth leads and tips," Caison said. "It gets other people out there looking for her."